Problems and Promise of Metaphor in
Organizations
(Or, what is at the root of the root
metaphor?)
KA 707
David White
January-February 2013
Introduction
Most management science is positivist – unless it is concertedly constructivist and
relativist. Yet most U.S. business executives believe themselves to be pragmatists (Spender,
1996). This is an interesting irony. Pragmatism concerns itself essentially with “what works”
(Spender, 1996:49) and therefore rejects positivisms claims to universal truth or the
constructivists counterclaims to private and relativist truth - except insofar as these
perspectives help address the question of ‘what works’.
What is ironic is that when it comes to organizational practice, managers and
practitioners willingly accept positivist theory and method as evidence of “truth”, especially in
regards to complex and contested domains such as culture and change. Perhaps this is because
capitalism is inherently rationalist: private ownership over the means of production and
distribution of goods and services presupposes the existence of a material world, a world that is
inherently knowable and subject to the laws of reason (Spender, 1996). It follows then that in
the quest for bureaucratic control and profit, modes of knowing that suggest certainty and
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D.White. Problems and Promise of Metaphor...KA 707
control will be favored over those that don’t. In other words, when ‘what works’ is unclear,
pragmatists become positivists.
The Impoverishment of Theories of Organizational Culture and Change
The organizational culture and change field is one example of this. Culture, at least in
the pop and mainstream management literature and in the minds of many CEOs is a means of
normative organizational control (Kunda, 1992). A study of theories-in-use of culture by
business leaders I recently conducted from interviews in the New York Sunday Times (2012)
found that nearly all the leaders interviewed believed they could directly or indirectly impact
the culture of their firms1. This tracks with my experience over many years as an organizational
development (OD) practitioner: most managers I have known believe they can either directly
control and direct culture, or at least strongly influence it. This so called “value engineering”
perspective (Martin and Frost, 2012: 602) tends to treat organizations as “unitary wholes”,
almost always considering culture from the solipsistic perspective of top management, and
usually adopting a “stimulus-response” approach to change (Alvesson and Sveningsson,
2008:41). Managerial desires for “quick fix” solutions and “easy answers” in order to attain
“greater productivity and profitability” (Martin and Frost, 2012: 613) are aided and abetted by
positivist methods that delimit ontological questions about what culture is, or epistemic
questions about how to measure it, so that something resembling “order” and “meaning” can
1
My research was based on a sample of 19 interviews on executive beliefs on leadership and culture taken from
The Corner Office column of the Business Section of the Sunday Times. I did not control for industry, firm size or
gender. All that varied was the degree of causal agency in their beliefs.
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be provided (Martin and Frost, 2012:612). For this reason positivist (or objectivist2) research on
culture is quite superficial, treating culture as a single variable such as values (for example, see
O'Reilly, Chatman, and Caldwell, 1991; for a critique see Martin and Frost, 2012), or as a
typology of a few factors as standards for strategy setting and change (for example, see
Cameron and Quinn, 1999 or Schneider, 1999), or treating culture as the imposition of top
management’s own values and beliefs (for example, see Deal and Kennedy, 1982; Kotter and
Hesketh, 1992; Fjortoft, N. and Smart, J. 1994; for a critique, see Alvesson and Sveningsson,
2008). Such research tends to put forth empirical “evidence” of culture change usually by
positing culture as a single variable and providing statistical evidence of the state change of that
variable (for example, see Van den Steen, 2009).
Yet the few serious studies on the effectiveness of culture change on large organizations
suggests either ambiguous results, anecdotal evidence, or no major effects on anything other
than “espoused values” (see Siehl, also Ogbanna and Wilkinson, in Alvesson and Sveningsson,
2008:43). Planned change efforts involving culture often fail (Balogun and Johnson, in Alvesson
and Svenignsson, 2008), and culture conflicts in mergers and acquisitions often do not deliver
hoped for value for buyers (Hesketh 2004; Bruner, 2001; Kelly, et al, in Van den Steen 2009).
Subjectivist (or postmodern) approaches to culture in organizations, for the most part,
offer little in the way of a better alternative. Most subjectivist culture research marginalizes
itself from pragmatic concerns by focusing mostly on critiques of objectivist research,
challenging its theoretical foundations and fueling what has come to be known as the “culture
2
I favor the terms “subjectivist and “objectivist” used by Lakoff and Johnson (1980) to broadly characterize the
opposing theoretical poles of positivism and relativism and all their variants, as they best characterize what is of
course a broad and diverse swath of theory and literature that is not so neatly constrained by one label.
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wars” (Martin and Frost, 2012). Postmodern and hermeneutic concerns over power and text
offer “few tools for action”, and as such fall far short of pragmatic relevance (Martin and Frost,
2012:613). Part of this failure may be part of the broader failure of the postmodern project in
anthropology in general, as noted by Melford Spiro quoting Marcelo Suarez-Orozco:
“As cultural anthropology continues its affair with ‘subjectivity’...and righteously renounces any
scientific’ pretensions, it is becoming a storyteller’s craft...[But] how can such an anthropology
be of use to our understanding – and dismantling – of ethnic cleansing, rape camps, and torture
camps?” (Suarez Orozco, in Spiro, 1996:776)
While the association with ethnic cleansings, rape and torture may sound melodramatic
in a discussion of metaphor in organizational culture and change, the analogy to my mind is apt.
The postmodern-subjectivists focus on critique while ignoring questions of pragmatic relevance
means the important contributions of these “troublemakers”, in the words of Alvesson and
Skoldberg (2009:3), particularly in the areas of methodology and interpretation, go unheeded in
practice.
In short, subjectivist approaches are for the most part irrelevant (and make few claims
to relevance) while objectivist approaches, while attractive to managers, fail for the most part
to produce anything meaningful in the way of positive change for being overly reductionist and
monolithic. Thus, pragmatic relevance is an issue of increasing importance to managers and
practitioners because much of the theory in culture and culture change still fails to inform
practice and action in any meaningful and visible way, despite nearly 40 years of keen academic
and business interest. Culture remains an impoverished concept not only because of the
ontological, epistemological, methodological reasons fueling the culture wars, but also because
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the context of modern capitalism and managerial hubris tend to marginalize the relevance of
these internecine academic fights.
And yet, despite all this, the culture concept in organizations is in no danger of being
dismissed. Far from it. Value engineering (and not just in the domain of culture) is alive and well
and perhaps considered the birthright of any CEO (Kunda, 1992) 3. And the lives of people who
work in organizations remain largely un-impacted by the science (Martin and Frost, 2012).
This brings us to the aims of this paper.
The Promise of Metaphor
The human mind’s propensity for analogy and metaphor might be one of the hallmarks
of cognition and reasoning (Gentner and Calhoun, 2008; Hummel and Holyoak, 1997). And
analogy may be one of the central arguments against the so-called modularity-of-mind thesis in
evolutionary psychology that posits the mind as made up of independent and discrete
“modules” that handle various processing functions such as language, music, spatial reasoning,
and the like (Griffith and Stotz, 2000; for a good review of the “modularity of mind” thesis, see
Sperber,1994). When it comes to understanding organizational culture and change, metaphor
theory holds great promise in illuminating the mechanisms and dynamics underlying these
complex concepts and processes (Morgan, 2006; Pondy, 1983). Here subjectivist approaches
have gained a foothold, most notably through Morgan’s bestselling Images of Organization
3
And if in doubt, one need to look no farther than the aforementioned Sunday New York times, or a recent issue
of the The Economist magazine where the Schumpeter column opines on the virtues of military culture and what
business can learn from it.
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D.White. Problems and Promise of Metaphor...KA 707
(2006), and yet it is also an area where traditional objectivist approaches, for example, in
positing how metaphor comprehension works, have been influential.
Aims of this Paper
By considering the role of metaphor in the organizational culture and change literature,
I will show how and why this work holds promise for managers and practitioners. It moves us
out of the current asphyxiating academic deadlock and brings forth new perspectives and
methods. At the same time, I will show how purely objectivist and subjectivist approaches to
metaphor continue to fall prey to the same problems noted above. In doing so my intent is to
offer a viable alternative, one that utilizes many of elements of objectivist and subjectivist
traditions but leverages advances in cognitive sciences over the last 30 years, advances that
offer new and crystalline insights about language, culture, cognition, and change, and the
central role that metaphor plays in all of these projects.
We need more sophisticated models and approaches to organizational culture and
change than what we have today. The cognitive approach to metaphor specifically, and culture
and change more generally, by virtue of its inherent interdisciplinary embrace offers
intervention possibilities at a deeper, more structural 4 and potentially more impactful level of
experience, a level that both evokes and bridges affect and inner experience with behavior,
practice, tools/technology and performance.
4
I use the term here not without awareness of its vagueness and complexity. I will return to the idea of structure –
a central thesis in this paper – at length in the sections that follow.
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The first section of this paper explores metaphor theory in organizations from two
prevailing vantage points, the ‘functionalist’ and the ‘symbolic’ (labels mine) and discusses the
ontological, epistemic and pragmatic challenges of each. The second section, in the form of
proposed theory, offers an alternative approach based on cognitive science that leverages
metaphor as a methodological tool rather than as discursive or interpretive text. In other
words, metaphor is not the end point of investigation, but the beginning. This approach
reconciles many of the inherent problems with functionalist or symbolic approaches and, more
importantly, puts metaphor in its rightful place as a robust and crucial analytic tool for
understanding cultural systems. Along the way I will lay out some of the implications of this
approach for organizational culture and culture change practice, and suggest how one might
locate this approach as part of an extended case study methodology.
I.
Metaphor: Paradoxes and Challenges
Gareth Morgan is perhaps best known to organizational development practitioners and
managers not as a scholar of organizational culture and symbolism but as the author of a well
known treatise on organizational metaphor5. His Images of Organization (2006) suggests all “all
theory is metaphor” 6 and that organizations can be characterized by a dominant or “root”
metaphor in order to think about their “nature” (2006:4-6). He is not suggesting organizations
are as described by one metaphor; he is challenging the reader to see organizations as images
5
Images of Organization is in fact taught as a textbook in prominent Masters of OD program (Pepperdine).
6
The constructivist tradition Morgan invokes is one with strong adherents (e.g. Knorr-Citina, 1999; Sackman, 1992;
Fleck 1979, 1935)
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and constructions that can lead to “fresh ways of seeing, understanding and shaping the
situations that we want to organize and manage” (2006:5).
On the surface this seems like an interesting way for managers and practitioners to
conceptualize the worlds in which they work. To “see” an organization metaphorically - in its
own right an interesting cluster of two underlying metaphors, THINKING IS SEEING, and
ORGANIZATIONS ARE VISIBLE OBJECTS - on closer examination suggests Morgan’s conceit
opens up interesting and problematic inquiries into what role metaphor can play in
organizational theory and practice. What does it mean to “see” an organization metaphorically?
And what is metaphor?
As Morgan’s constructivist account demonstrates, metaphor is a powerful tool for
conceptualizing organizational phenomena. But a wider read of this literature reveals that by
no means is metaphor well understood. This literature is fraught with open questions, paradox
and a general lack of congruence on what metaphor is, what function in serves, and how it
should be conceptualized. What is missing is a full reckoning of the advances in cognitive
anthropology, linguistics and psychology over the last 30 years that offer broader and more
precise insight into the relationship between metaphorical language and cognition, insights
applicable to organizational culture theory and practice. Before we explore what these are,
let’s examine the organizational metaphor literature to understand this lack of congruence.
What is metaphor? Clearly in the sense Morgan is using it, metaphor here is not of the
literary kind in the sense of man is a wolf. Morgan is invoking a deeper sense of the term with
origins in Aristotle where metaphor involves comparison rooted in analogy (Ortony, 1993).
More recent views entail thinking of metaphor in a “tensive” sense, calling out inherent
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incompatibilities between the terms used in the comparison (Richards, 1936b, in Ortony,
1993:3; Morgan 2006).
Modern views of metaphor tend to fragment into distinct camps, camps that can be
classified along a continuum extending from representational/functional to structural/symbolic.
(my classification scheme is not explicit in the writings of the various theorists). In much of the
literature theorists divide into those who tend to think of metaphor as linguistic content, in
other words, in functional terms (what metaphors are for) from those who think in terms of
underlying systems or models and conceive of metaphors largely as symbolic representations
(i.e. what metaphors are) (Ortony, 1993; Lakoff and Johnson, 1980).
Functionalist Views
The representational/functionalist end of this continuum is premised on the idea that
when people use metaphor they do so for a reason, most often to inject meaning and “resolve
paradox and contradiction” (Pondy, 1983: 157; Armenakis, 1992). Metaphors may be used for
economy, to convey meaning more quickly or simply (Schon, 1993; Strauss and Quinn, 1997). I
have observed in my own research that metaphor use may be important to confer legitimacy or
influence, as when a speaker invokes a metaphor from a specialized domain to communicate
with someone of perceived importance in that domain. Metaphors may also be “generative” to
enable new images, perceptions and possible world views and action (Schon,1993; Morgan
2006), and even to motivate others to action (Basten, 2001). For example, problem reframing
almost always requires the use of new metaphors, as in Schon’s (1993) compelling example of
how the problem of urban blight was reframed from “slum” and “squatter settlement” to
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D.White. Problems and Promise of Metaphor...KA 707
“sites” and “services”, which in turn enabled municipalities to conceive of new ways to deliver
services to the urban poor (Schon, 1993).
All of these accounts rely, in whole or in part, on three underlying assumptions. First,
metaphor use is intentional, conscious and deliberate. Second, metaphors convey clear
meaning, or at least meaning that can be accessed and interpreted by others. Third, metaphors
– primarily as reframing devices in the sense of Schon (1993; see also Gentner – 2008) - can
change attitude or affect. In all these ways metaphors can be considered functional linguistic
tools: metaphors do something – to reframe, to convince, to activate, etc.
This functionalist perspective is not incompatible with the “standard pragmatic model”
of metaphor comprehension (Glucksberg, 2008: 68). Under this model metaphors are implied
similes, whereby any metaphor can be understood through inclusion of the word like: thus, my
job is a jail is understood as my job is like a jail. Doing so allows the utterance to be understood
as a literal comparison (Glucksberg, 2008), in the same way as comprehending literal meaning
(Searle, 1979, in Gluckberg, 2008; see also Johnson, 1987). In this view metaphor has no special
linguistic or cognitive status (Glucksberg 2008; Lakoff 1987). Whether conscious or not, this
model – a dominant view in linguistics and philosophy through much of the 20th century (for a
discussion, see Johnson 1987, Barcelona 2003, Rumelhart 1993) - appears to exert influence
over functionalist theorists.
Take, for example, Morgan’s extended metaphors for organization. There is nothing in
Morgan’s metaphors that could not be understood in literal terms: organizations are like
machines, or like organisms, etc. Morgan’s point is that understanding organizations
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metaphorically affords new ways of behaving in them (Morgan, 2006) and the standard model
does not change any of these interpretations.
Obviously the content of metaphor is an important part of how and why metaphors are
powerful. Metaphors do inject meaning, resolve paradox, economically communicate, attract
power and help frame new attitudes and actions. But to rest with this view is to greatly restrict
metaphor’s power and range.
Problems with the Functionalist View
To presuppose metaphor is the sole provenance of conscious and verbal thought
underestimates one of the most powerful insights of cognitive linguistics, anthropology and
psychology in the last 30 years, namely that cognition is inherently metaphorical (or analogical).
Many aspects of reasoning (abstract, spatial, temporal, etc.) are inherently and structurally
metaphorical through and though (Lakoff and Johnson 1980, 2003; Johnson, 1987; Lakoff 1987,
1999). Limiting metaphor to the realm of the conscious and linguistic (and intentional and
propositional) underdetermines the role of preconscious or tacit metaphorical knowledge in
structuring experience and sensemaking. Both of these omissions have implications for how
metaphor is used in theory and practice.
1. Comprehending metaphor is not like comprehending literal language
Let’s return to the standard pragmatic view of meaning. This view holds that metaphor
is no different than literal language. The problem with this view is that it has been invalidated
empirically (Glucksberg, 2008; Giora 2008; Rumelhart 1993, Ortony 1993). Metaphor
comprehension is simply is not a matter of comparing concepts through simile and then
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computing the resultant literal meaning (Glucksberg, 2008). Instead, metaphors are understood
as “class inclusion” statements: when someone says my job is a jail what is meant literally is
that one’s notion of job belongs in the same class of things as jails (Glucksberg, 2008). There is
no comparison; the two concepts involved in the analog are in essence blended so as to be
represented as a single concept (Fauconnier, 1997; Piavio and Walsh, 1993). This is a non-trivial
cognitive feature of metaphor with significant implications for theory and practice. For one,
when someone uses metaphor they are potentially conveying a representation of their own
cognitive structure, how ‘they make sense of things’ (we will discuss this more below).
From a cognitive neuroscience perspective, metaphor comprehension looks different
than literal language. For example, it is well established that the left hemisphere of the brain is
critical to language processing (Bookheimer, 2002, in Diaz et al, 2012). Recently, it has been
found that the right hemisphere is also involved in language, and especially in comprehending
figural and metaphorical language (Diaz, et al 2012). Recent studies using fMRI techniques
showed that novel sentences and novel as well as familiar metaphors were actively processed
in both hemispheres, with conventional metaphors (e.g. sweat dreams) showing more activity
in the left hemisphere while novel metaphors and figurative sentences showing greater
activation than literal sentences in the right (Diaz, et al, 2012). One hypothesis is that novel
figurative sentences and metaphor require more bilateral involvement because these
structures pose more integration demands on comprehension (Diaz et al, 2012). At least in
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D.White. Problems and Promise of Metaphor...KA 707
terms of neural processing, novel metaphors and figurative speech are processed differently
than literal language and conventional metaphors. Metaphors, it seems, really are different 7.
Other empirical studies involving metaphor understanding use reading time as a proxy
for meaning comprehension. For example, in studies of literal versus figurative meanings for
paraphrases of ambiguous statements such as Must you open the window, which can be
paraphrased as a direct request (close the window!) or a more literal one (is it necessary that
you open the window?), Rumelhart’s student, Ray Gibbs found that comprehension took no
longer for indirect paraphrases when the context was known as for direct paraphrases with no
known context (in Rumelhart, 1993:75). The suggestion was that comprehension cannot be
based on first determining literal meaning because in-context indirect and out-of-context direct
paraphrases were processed at the same rate (Rumelhart, 1993). Gibbs has also shown
empirically that people often have contradictory concepts of literal meanings, and apply
different senses of the literal meaning based on the task that relates to the literal meaning
(Gibbs, 2008)8.
2. Metaphor comprehension involves more than words
Do people always mean what they say when using metaphor? When hearing a
metaphor, do people always understand it in the same way? The presumption of conscious
intention and consistent meaning implied by the functionalist perspective harkens to the school
of structural linguistics of the 1960s and 1970s, which held that the “meaning of objects and
7
It is tempting to get carried away with neural “evidence” of linguistic or cognitive phenomena. But neuroscience
only paints a picture, literally, of chemical processes. Such pictures should not be over interpreted, and instead
used suggestively as a parcel of evidence among many other kinds.
8
More on the relationship between task and meaning is covered in section II, below
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events are equated with the meaning of the words that label them” (Quinn, 2011:35). Yet close
analysis of words or phrases cannot alone convey what meaning these words or phrases have
for a person or a group, much less what they may or may not know. Most of the time
something more than words is needed.
For one, context matters. Giora’s (2008, 1997) graded salience hypothesis claims
comprehension is less about whether language is literal or figural but rather is based on
degrees of “salience” - the frequency, familiarity and the nature and amount of context
provided (Giora, 1997). In this view highly salient words and phrases, whether literal or
figurative are easier (quicker, more intelligible) to process than less salient ones, which require
additional cognitive resources and are “activated after more salient interpretations” (Diaz,
Barrett and Hogstrom, 2011:320). Thus, idioms (spill the beans) take longer to read in less
salient but literal contexts (i.e. actually spilling beans) than in a context suggestive of their
idiomatic meaning (i.e. divulging a secret), while novel metaphors (their bone density is not like
ours) take longer to read in nonsalient, figurative contexts (i.e. they are not as tough as us) than
in contexts that “invite literal interpretations” (i.e. actually comparing bone density scans at the
doctor’s office) (Giora, 2008: 153). When prior context is reinforcing and salient, people have
no difficulty processing metaphors at the same rate as literal language (Giora, 2008). If
metaphor is not only a matter of language, then functionalist accounts of metaphor cannot be
the whole story of what is happening when people use metaphor.
Current theory in cognitive linguistics defines metaphor as a “cognitive mechanism”
whereby “one experiential domain” is wholly or partially projected onto another “so that the
second domain is partially understood in terms of the first one” (Barcelona 2003:3; Lakoff and
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Johnson 1980). This theory separates conceptual metaphorical projection, which is largely
unconscious and automatic and a foundational feature of human cognition, from metaphorical
expression which may or may not be conscious, especially in the case of conventional
metaphors (Barcelona, 2003; Lakoff 1987; Lakoff and Johnson, 1980). This is an important
distinction, because conceptual metaphorical projection
“...may conventionally be activated by or instantiated in, a morpheme, a word, a phrase, a
clause, a sentence, a whole text, gestures, and other types of behavior, reasoning processes,
etc. A linguistic expression may eventually cease to be used metaphorically...but the
corresponding conceptual projection may still be alive and reflected in other linguistic
expressions.” (Barcelona 2003:5)
Thus metaphors can make explicit and conscious what is unconscious (Alverson, 1991)
or remain largely unconscious, especially as conventional metaphors (e.g. she is in the pits; I’m
down in the dumps) (Barcelona, 2003) or as domain-specific metaphors used by members of an
occupational group such as software engineers (when will you ship that process? We need to
QA that report)9. The way people talk often depends on so-called root metaphors10 which can
be misleading (Ortony 1993; Lakoff and Johnson, 1980; Lakoff 1987). As such metaphors
contain all sorts of cognitive biases (Alvi, 2011), biases emanating both in the projective
conceptual structure of metaphor and in its linguistic content, and these biases often drive
behavior. In the organizational context, for example, Alvi (2011) showed how pervasive
cognitive bias expressed through metaphor led to misconceptions in organizational strategy,
which led to inappropriate action (2011). Thus when Morgan likens an organization to a
machine, he is invoking both a linguistic and a conceptual metaphor. The paradigms or
9
This is based on my own research on metaphor use by software engineers.
10
Ortony also labels “root metaphors” image schemas, a theory developed by Lakoff (1987).
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assumptions underlying the metaphor may be sources of insight, as Morgan would have us
think, as well as constraints provisioned by the underlying structure (Basten, 2001). Those who
espouse functionalist views and take metaphor at only face value risk missing the full extent of
its inherent potential biases.
The cognitive nature of metaphor becomes especially problematic when one uses
language to examine shared systems of belief or meaning in a group. Here language, whether
literal or figurative usually falls far short of providing a clear or complete picture of what the
group believes or understands to be true.
In the 1960s and 1970s Roy D’Andrade, in his study of American’s belief about illness,
was one of the first to show convincingly how analysis of language alone was insufficient for
understanding what a group’s beliefs might actually be about a subject (in this case, disease
states). In his study he asked research subjects to match 30 illness terms (chicken pox, strep
throat, etc.) with 30 causal phrases (you can catch ___ from other people or you never really get
over___, etc.) and then rate the resulting “belief frame” as true or false (D’Andrade, 1995:126).
This required his subjects to make 900 independent judgments, some based on novel and
unlikely combinations such as you can catch dental cavities in bad weather (1995:126). What he
realized was that subjects managed to rate all 900 items not from the words in the matching
statements alone but by using “other things they already knew” (1995:126). To figure out
whether subjects were basing their answers on the logical relationships implied by the terms in
the belief frames, he subjected all responses to a computer program to map out the causal
relationships based on the formal definitions of terms in each belief frame. What he found was
that while many causal and taxonomic connections could be drawn based on definitions alone
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(for example, that contagious diseases are caused by germs), this still did not explain how his
subjects successfully answered novel questions about disease:
“For example, because of the ideas I have about germs I could understand why germ diseases
were contagious...But this basic idea about germs is nowhere represented in the graph (i.e. the
computer generated data)...To understand American beliefs about colds, measles, polio, etc.
requires an understanding of the germ schema and this cannot be obtained from an analysis of
the properties of diseases alone.” (1995:129).
To D’Andrade, a schema is “an organized framework of (mental) objects and relations which
has yet to be filled in with concrete detail” (1995:124). In this case, a shared germ schema
rather than the specific dictionary meaning of terms or the taxonomic relationship between
terms was needed to explain American’s systems of belief of about disease.
In another study of the relationship between language and meaning, D’Andrade showed
how ratings of character traits in the so-called “big five” personality assessment, an instrument
psychologists have used to measure personality traits such as extroversion, agreeableness,
conscientiousness, emotional stability, and culture11, could be based on “feature overlap”
(1995:77). For example, features defining someone as friendly were positively correlated with
those defining someone as sociable. Traits such as cleverness correlated with inventiveness. His
study showed that, to some extent, these factors do not necessarily measure underlying
dimensions in personality but overlaps in meaning among words (1995:81). And meaning is a
function of culture: cross-cultural studies of “big five” factors have shown how other societies
use different classification schemes than those in the “big five” to understand salient features
of personality, casting doubt on the universality of personality dimensions and providing more
11
As in “artistically sensitive”, “intellectual” and “polished” etc. (D’Andrade, 1995:81)
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pointed evidence for how meaning is culturally construed (for example, see White’s study of
the A’raa, in D’Andrade, 1995:86).
The implications of these studies on our discussion on metaphor are that meaning is not
simply a function of language, and language may or may not be a direct representation of
underlying cognitive structure. Subjects in a cultural group can rate personality traits on the
basis of general and overlapping characteristics rather than precise word meaning, and even
when using an abundance of literal terms like disease names, it is impossible to fully explicate a
group’s understanding of that domain based on words meanings alone. Clearly, how individuals
and groups understand and derive meaning is a function of much more than language.
3. Metaphor is a feature of cognition, not just language
The ability to perceive and use analogy is a major contributor – arguably the major
contributor – to the remarkable cognitive capacities of humans (Gentner and Calhoun, 2008).
Thus, to believe metaphor to be ‘a mere matter of words’ ignores the overwhelming amount of
evidence pointing to the metaphorical (or analogical) nature of reasoning and cognition (Lakoff
and Johnson, 2003). While full treatment of the evidence available is beyond the scope of this
paper, it is worthwhile to review in brief some of the relevant experimental evidence from
cognitive psychology.
Analogical thinking requires retrieving an analog source and then “mapping” elements
of the source to a target (Hummel and Holyoak, 1997; Mandler, 1992). This process generates a
schematic abstraction that eliminates most of the spatial information and detail processed
during original perception (Mandler, 1992). What is left is a set of correspondences where the
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underlying abstract form and structure of the analogy – the schema – is what is highlighted.
Thus, in comparing an office to a jail, speakers will reference a schema that utilizes the common
structure – in this case forced confinement - of both cases (Gentner et al 2003). Experimental
evidence for this has been demonstrated in that induction of common schematic structure
leads to better performance on parallel processing comprehension and memory problems.
More abstract analogies help in reasoning and remembering 12 (Gentner and Colhoun, 2008).
Lakoff and Johnson (1980, 1987, 1999, 2003) have provided perhaps the most influential
account of metaphorically-based cognitive structuring. Building off of earlier work by JohnsonLaird, Rumelhart, and Rosch (Lakoff, 1987; Johnson, 1987), their theory is premised on the
notion that complex and abstract mental structure is built up from basic or primary experiential
structure that has its basis in everyday sensorimotor experience. Thus basic “image schemas”
such as CONTAINER, UP-DOWN, BALANCE, CYCLE, PATH-GOAL, FORCE (etc.) provide the
essential cognitive template for abstract thinking. For example, with the CONTAINER image
schema
“We can impose a conceptual container schema on a visual scene. We can impose a container
schema on something we hear, as when we conceptually separate out one part of a piece of
music from another. We can also impose container schema on our motor movements, as when
a baseball coach breaks down a batter’s swing into component parts…” (Lakoff and Johnson,
1999:32)
12
Gentner and her colleagues have found that visual representations enable faster abstraction of schemas
(Gentner et al, 2009) Her experiments found that the use of dynamic visual representations, such as videos, in
analogical transfer learning fostered accessibility to both surface and relational similarities in the schema and
enabled abstraction of the schema to solve new target problems. The improved quality of the induced schema
brought about by videos was highly predictive of transfer performance.
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Such cross-domain utility enables image schemas to become foundational for cognition
because they are perceptually uncommitted structures (Shore, 1996). Through analogical or
metaphorical projection we thus reason in more complex and abstract ways based on these
primary, uncommitted structures (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980, 1999; Lakoff, 1987; Johnson,
1987). Thus, image-schemas are sources for metaphor, metonymy, conceptual blending and
mental framing, among other linguistic forms that make up much of how we reason. For
example, the metaphor LOVE IS A JOURNEY is made up primary metaphors such as PURPOSES
ARE DESTINATIONS and which in turn are based on the image schema DIFFICULTIES ARE
IMPEDIMENTS TO MOTION (Lakoff, 2008)13.
Learning is also fundamentally analogical14. For example, language acquisition relies on
preverbal concepts in order for meaning to be “mapped” onto verbal concepts. By connecting
underlying schematic structure to language, the foundation is provided for construction of
more abstract or elaborated concepts, and this process appears to be operative from early
childhood. Studies with 6 and 7-month-old deaf infants and their learning of sign language, as
well as cross-cultural studies of learning modal grammar such as transitive verb and
prepositional phrases strongly suggest that conceptual, imagistic-schematic processing is well
intact by that age (Mandler, 1992). Without schemas, or if, say, learning transitivity was solely
based on having to first learn grammatical rules, linguistic transitivity and prepositional
13
Note, the Lakoffian view of metaphorical structuring may place too much linguistic emphasis on metaphor. It is
not metaphor per se that enables conceptualization, but the underlying schema that constitutes and prescribes an
entire set of metaphors.
14
We learn in other ways too. As Gentner states, we learn also “by association, by reinforcement, by
automatization, and by statistical learning of sequences. But these capabilities are shared with other animals”.
Analogical learning is uniquely human (Gentner 2010:2).
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phrasing would occur much later (Mandler, 1992) 15. The development of reasoning in children
is also inherently analogical. To Piaget (1962), development occurs when a child compares
modes of reasoning that are different to each other, which results in cognitive “subsystems”
being in “dis-equilibrium” where different schemas are in conflict, or where one schema has
reached a more advanced state than the other (Piaget, 1955, in Ginsburg & Opper, 1979).
Interestingly, analogy seems to be core to domain-specific learning in professional communities
and in organizational sensemaking16 as well (Weick, 1995).
A view of metaphor as solely functionalist – that is, solely a matter of conscious thought
and language and thus intentional and propositional – relegates metaphor to a bit part on the
stage of how people and groups make meaning. Fortunately, symbolic accounts of metaphor
correct this slight. Unfortunately these accounts have their own set of problems, to which we
now turn.
Symbolic Views
Michael Herzfeld writes that familiar symbols are the most “potent distillations of social
unity” (2001:126). As human systems, organizations are symbol-generating milieus. Humans
who live and work in organizations seek meaning in myriad ways through behavior, ritual,
language, myths and objects (Morgan, Frost and Pondy, 1983). The simplest bureaucratic act,
15
Linguistic evidence for how metaphors structure thought by creating categories (Glucksberg, 2007) and for how metaphors
link lower level schemas to higher level abstract thought has been provided by Lakoff and Johnson (1980), Lakoff (1987),
Kovecses (2007), Nunez (2010), and several others, and I have covered this research elsewhere.
16
Weick however does not provide an account of sensemaking that is anything other than language-based. The
schema-based perspective described here locates sensemaking as a cognitive activity that may take its form in
language, or in many other kinds of ‘texts’ and practice.
21
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such as carrying a piece of paper with a signature from one office to another, is laden with
symbolic richness (Morgan, Frost, and Pondy, 1983). That is why bureaucracies are “not geared
to deal with factual realities; they deal with what is symbolically acceptable as evidence”
(1983:9). Symbols thus are of great interest to organizational theorists, and by now there is a
substantive literature in this area (for example, Morgan, Frost and Pondy, 1983; Frost et al
1985; Berg, 1985; Swidler, 1986; Johnson 1990; Armenakis and Bedeian, 1992; Alvesson and
Sveningsson, 2008). Theorists of organizational change see symbols as important signals that
connect past and present with the future (Johnson, 1990), and that attach signs with meaning
(Walter, 1983).
Metaphor is one carrier of organizational symbolism. Some theorists posit that
metaphors define a groups’ reality (Cleary and Packard, 1992). To others, metaphors represent
underlying cultural or cognitive models and schemas (Tsoukas, 1991; Armenakis and Bedeian,
1992; Strauss and Quinn, 1997; Alvi, 2011). Models and schemas provide the foundation for
organizational cognition and sensemaking, and as such are thought of as instrumental in change
(Bartunek and Moch, 1987; Tsoukas, 1991; Harris, 1994). Yet somewhat paradoxically,
frameworks that bring together the organizational, cognitive and cultural dimensions of change
with the “symbolic actions of change agents” are still few (Johnson, 1990:183). Why this is the
case in my view has to do both with the somewhat problematic nature of un-reflexive theory
on organizational symbolism (see below), and with the relative incompleteness of many
explanatory frameworks. As theory and research in cognitive linguistics, anthropology,
psychology, sociology and neuroscience continue to add a rich body of knowledge to our
understanding of cognition, the origins, mechanisms and dynamics underlying the relationship
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between cognitive structure, metaphor, and organizational culture and change remains
emergent.
Problems with Symbolic Views
In order to understand some of the issues inherent in symbolic approaches to
metaphor, we need to zoom out from metaphor to consider some of the problems inherent in
symbolic approaches to organizational culture and change in general. And we need to bifurcate
our analysis. Problems with symbolic approaches are not all of the same kind. Symbolic
approaches claiming metaphor and language make up “reality”, for example, need to be
considered in light of subjectivist ontologies. On the other hand, structural-symbolic
approaches need to be examined on epistemic terms (e.g. what, exactly, is a schema?). Full
treatment of these issues, however, would put us into lengthy critiques of postmodern
anthropology and social science and is unfortunately beyond the scope of this paper.
1. ‘Language games’ and interpretation: what do the symbols mean, and to
whom?
Bruno Latour notes,
“Ordinary people imagine that the power of gods, the objectivity of money, the attraction of
fashion, the beauty of art, come from some objective properties intrinsic to the nature of things.
Fortunately, social scientists know better...Gods, money, fashion and art offer only a surface
projection of our social needs and interests...the inner properties of objects do not count...they
are the mere receptacles for human categories”. (1993:52)
For symbols like art and money to be conceived as “receptacles” of human categorization by
definition requires an epistemic logic to connect the human propensity to categorize to the
capacity to enroll objects such as gods and money in ways that are meaningful. Unfortunately,
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D.White. Problems and Promise of Metaphor...KA 707
some of the writing on organizational metaphor and symbolism is problematic in this regard,
falling prey to the same issues that beset subjectivist approaches overall. For example, some
research treats symbols as universally construed. Thus the iconic trappings of corporate life
such as glass office towers, express elevators, corner offices (etc.) are interpreted in
psychoanalytic terms as “assertive”, “phallic” and “grandiose” representations of self assurance
and power (Walter, 1983:259). Treatments of institutional narrative and language, such as
Wilkins’ discussion of stories that “control” organizations (Wilkins, 1983:81), or Evered’s
assertion that the “language” of the U.S. Navy “constructs the social world” of the Navy
(Evered, 1983: 127) claim that the social and cultural realities of these organizations can be
discerned through language.
While illuminating, like Morgan’s organizational metaphors these assumptions are
based on the metaphor of the ‘language game’, a suggestion that “reality” can be seen through
the study of linguistic codes and practices (Morgan, Frost and Pondy, 1983:23). This
‘structuralist’ approach finds its origins in the works of Geertz (1973) and Levi-Strauss (1985)
and has powerfully influenced the hermeneutic school, notably in the work of Ricoeur (Morgan,
Frost, and Pondy, 1983). Geertz, in particular, seems to have laid the foundation for much of
the symbolic school in organizational theory (and influencing organizational culture theorists
like Alvesson and Berg) by rejecting the idea that culture exists in human minds (Geertz, 1973).
Geertz’s influential position located culture exclusively in symbols (public forms), utterances
(semiotic forms), artifacts and other “public phenomena” (Shore, 1996:51). Thus by uncovering
the ‘rules’ inherent in text, the rules governing social life (of those for whom the ‘text’ pertains)
can be inferred. Social and cultural realities have correspondences that can be seen through
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D.White. Problems and Promise of Metaphor...KA 707
careful ‘reading’ of texts. Thus, when it comes to language and symbols, there is nothing but
text (Martin and Frost, 2012).
This is essentially the postmodern project in anthropology: “reality” is fiction and
illusion. A particular text reflects the subjective views of the subjects, the author, and the
author’s readers (Martin and Frost, 2012:611). Text analysis justifies its own means and ends
because there is nothing outside of the text (Geertz, 1973; Moi, 1985, Weedon 1987, in Martin
and Frost, 2012). Claims of ‘truth’, such as how an author privileges some sources while
suppressing others, or how she selects and interprets data while restricting anomalies or
uncertainties (etc.) are all made analytically transparent (Martin and Frost, 2012). The power of
this project lies in its analytic self-consciousness, and this is perhaps postmodernism’s greatest
contribution to social science. But reflexive methodological contributions aside - and also
leaving aside for the moment the fact the symbolic approaches mentioned above fail to meet
this test of reflexivity - the subjectivist approach to organizational symbolism and metaphor
suffers from three general limitations.
First, in assuming language and symbols are direct representations of cultural reality (for
example, see Eco, 1979), it assumes they are understood in the same way by all members of a
culture. This is a curiously reductionist approach that ironically echoes the subjectivists critique
of positivist culture research. And the problem of meaning is sidestepped: “meaning” is in the
text, not in the “minds” of humans. But what if culture is made up of multiple subcultures (for
example, see Martin, 2002, or Barley, 1983) each with their own symbols? What if culture is not
only to be found in text but in ‘systems of meaning’ that manifests in different ways depending
25
D.White. Problems and Promise of Metaphor...KA 707
on context, as the cognitive turn in anthropology has suggested (D’Andrade 1995; Shore, 1996;
Quinn, 2011)? Pragmatically, Martin has shown how organizational narratives, for example, are
interpreted differently by different groups within the same organization (Martin, 1983). Barley
(1983), Kunda (1992), Gregory (in Martin, 2002), Stewart (2002) and others have shown how
occupational subgroups in an organization form their own interpretations of organizational
symbols and other phenomena.
Second, in the interpretation of texts, whose interpretation counts? How does one
study metaphor and symbol in this way without falling prey to etic traps? To my mind, no
amount of analytic reflexivity counterbalances the fact that an analysts’ particular
interpretation of cultural or symbolic phenomena may not be one that is shared by anyone else
within the social group from which such phenomena purportedly emanates. This is the political
argument away from subjectivity: if only subjective interpretation of text matters, then surely
anthropology and social sciences are no different than fiction (Herzfeld, 2001). Self-reference
becomes the product, and infinite regression is the result: to admit ‘where I stand on such and
such phenomena’ would “itself be fiction” (Herzfeld, 2001:44).
Third and closely related, to assume all cultural realities, including language and
metaphor, are subjective is to deny the existence of any mind-independent reality, cultural or
otherwise, beyond the text: the existence of the text itself assumes a reality referenced by the
text. As put by Searle:
“...Whenever we use a language that purports to have public objects of reference, we commit
ourselves to realism. The commitment is not a specific theory as to how the world is, but rather
that there is a way that it is” (Searle 1993a, in Spiro, 1996:770)
26
D.White. Problems and Promise of Metaphor...KA 707
Or in the words of Latour:
“When we are dealing with science and technology, it is hard to imagine for long that we are a
text that is writing itself, a discourse that is speaking all by itself, a play of signifiers without
signifieds.” (1993:64)
This sole focus on text, on the purely symbolic, makes culture a “veil of symbols and
artifacts” (D’Andrade, 1995:22). What is missed in the symbolic conception is that culture exists
in both social and psychological realms, in social artifacts and cognitive representations (Shore,
1996). Perpetuating a discontinuity between symbols and text on the one hand, and the
material as well as the cognitive on the other advances a “false dichotomy” (Shore, 1996:51)
which leads ultimately to the two dead ends of absolute objectivism or absolute subjectivism.
Moreover, it leads to disjointed and dichotomous practice. Organizational researchers are
seduced into ignoring phenomena such as shared cognition, affect, and intent, practice and
action, because “culture” by definition is separated from the context in which that culture is
embedded. When reasoning and sensemaking is detached from culture, leaving what is
“cultural” either to symbols, artifact, and language, normative attempts to engineer culture can
be imposed without any epistemological self consciousness.
Take the case of a bright and well meaning CEO I know personally. She recently wrote a
memo to the company announcing what the new culture was going to be. Memos like these,
written with the earnest resolve of a change-minded CEO, are where such dichotomy lands us.
This dichotomy is not just a matter of intellectual debate. It causes confusion and wasted
energy in the lives of people in organizations. By not separating symbol and language from
meaning and practice, how we study and intervene in culture and change shifts from thinking of
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D.White. Problems and Promise of Metaphor...KA 707
systems and bureaucracies as either wholly autonomous or wholly intersubjective to thinking of
these structures as embedded in a social, historical, technological and cultural context in which
they may only partially have agency. If theory ever hopes to move organizational practice away
from such seductions as value engineering, perpetuating false dichotomies based on militant
anti-realism or militant positivism will never get us there.
2. To claim the existence of structure is to invent it
What is structure? To the social historian William Sewell, it is the “most important and
most elusive term in social science” (1992:1). It consists of “schemas” which are “rules that
exist at various levels” of consciousness, and “resources”, cultural artifacts such as physical
objects (e.g. Hudson Bay blankets) but also intangibles, like money (Sewell, 1992: 9-11).
Importantly, in Sewell’s (1992) conception, schemas are the effects of resources as resources
are the effects of schemas. In this way structure, through schema-endowed practice, provides
the mediating foundation between culture and environment. This closely resembles Bourdieu’s
(1977) conception of “habitus”, the “ritual practice” and “structures constitutive of a particular
type of environment” (Bourdieu, 1977:72).
Schemas as an underlying structuring mechanism mediating between perception and
reason are a lynchpin in cognitive science’s conception of cognition. And yet there is still
debate about what schemas are 17, and more importantly, debate about their ontological status.
It is this latter debate that undermines structural-symbolic approaches to metaphor and that I
wish to take up here.
17
I have explored at length elsewhere the various different theories of schemas, and will be discussing these
theories at length in my thesis.
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The problem with studying schemas is that to study them you have to first invent the
idea of them. Such circularity makes schemas to some theorists ontologically problematic
(Krasny, Sadosky, and Paivio, 2007). This is the same critique levied at social and cultural
structural analysis in general: because common structure can be observed by an outsider for
any collection of “texts” within a group does not necessarily mean that structure has any
psychological reality for individuals within that group (Shore, 1996:70). This is the same
challenge, in my view, that has fueled the emic-etic debate in anthropology for 100 years.
Those who contest the existence of schemas also contest their status as agents in embodied
cognition (Krasny, Sadosky, and Paivio, 2007). These theorists point to Kant’s original
conception of schemas as a priori, disembodied abstractions of thought whose function is to
synthesize perceptual information (Krasny, Sadosky, and Paivio, 2007).
And yet, as I shall show below, the evidence, if not for schemas per se then for cognitive
structuring as the underpinning of language and cognition, is circumstantially strong. From
cognitive anthropology, psychology, linguistics, and neuroscience significant evidence can be
triangulated to infer cognition is strongly embodied, inherently analogical, largely socially and
culturally determined and that schemas – or some preverbal, pre conscious gestalt structure mediate and circumscribe language and meaning and, by extension, cultural experience
(Johnson, 1987, 1995, 2007; Lakoff and Johnson, 1999; D’Andrade, 1995; Shore, 1996, 2002;
Hutchins, 1995, 2005, 2010; Strauss and Quinn,1997;Quinn, 2012). Metaphor, as it turns out,
plays a central role in this conception: metaphor is one of the most effective ways to identify
underlying schematic gestalt structure (Johnson, 1987; Lakoff, 1987; Lakoff and Johnson, 1999).
In section II, below, through a description of what I tentatively label a functionally embodied
29
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theory of culture, I will begin to show how metaphor functions in this way and in so doing offer
some ideas about how this theory holds promise for organizational culture and change work.
II.
A Cognitive View of Metaphor
Prior to the development of schema theory, the major cognitive objects of study in
anthropology were symbolic – “words, or other kinds of signifiers” which serve to connect
“linguistic forms to the world” (D’Andrade, 1995, in Quinn 2012:40). After schemas, thought
was independent of language (Rumelhart and Ortony, 1977, Rumerlhart 1993). And with this
divorce came in increase in interest in the cognitive processes such as reasoning and memory,
and along with this interest in metaphor, not as an object of language but as an object of
thought and emotion (Strauss and Quinn, 1997; Quinn 2012).
This cognitive view of metaphor provides the theoretical as well as pragmatic lynchpin
for positing my so-called functionally embodied theory of culture, which is laid out in several
propositions, below. Theory and research supporting each proposition emanates from the
many disciplines of cognitive science and could fill several books; space unfortunately precludes
more than just a brief treatment of each. Each of the propositions below, taken independently,
does not provide sufficient evidence of cognitive structuring. Taken together, I believe they do.
1. Cognition is embodied
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D.White. Problems and Promise of Metaphor...KA 707
Embodiment in cognitive science is the idea the bodies we have, along with the
experiences we have inhabiting them in space and gravity as well as in social and cultural
environments influences how we reason and understand the world (Johnson,1987; Kimmel,
2008; Hutchins, 2010; Kitayama and Park, 2010;). Cognition is “grounded in the sensorimotor
dynamics of the interaction between a living organism and its environment…its effective,
embodied action in the world constitutes its perception and grounds its cognition” (Stewart, et
al, 2010: vii). From basic embodied experience we “enact” the world around us – we make
sense of the world in active, interdependent, intersubjective, culturally situated and evolving
ways (Hutchins, 2010:428).
Abundant experimental, neurological and neurocomputational evidence supports this
view. Experimental evidence suggests that bodily action is actively involved in imagination and
abstract thought (Gibbs, 2008). Movement does not activate a specific word but rather a
mental simulation of action, suggesting that conceptions of abstractions like time are in part
structured by the experience of our own bodies in space and time (Gibbs, 2003). The same
holds for imagined action. Experimental evidence suggests people easily and quickly make
sense of a metaphor like stomp out racism based on connecting the physical activity of
stomping with the abstract concept of racism (Gibbs, 2008). Social processes as well as those
involving material tools used in the enactment of routines and tasks, such as coordinating the
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activities involved in navigating a large ship or flying a commercial airliner, also have been
shown to anchor abstract thinking (Nomura et al, 2005; Hutchins, 2005, 2010).
Extensive neuroscience data obtained through fMRI and ERP (event-related potentials)
shows how the brain is actively involved in processing physical, abstract, and culturally
patterned action as well as language and emotion (Lieberman et al 2007; Lakoff, 2008;
Kitayama and Park, 2010; Lieberman and Eisenberger, 2010;). Via “mirror neurons”
neuroscientists have shown that when people think about a physical activity the same set of
neurons fire as when they physically engage in that activity (Gibbs, 2008). The emerging field of
cultural neuroscience presents abundant evidence showing how the brain processes language
information differently across language groups (Kitayama and Park, 2010), as well as how
experts process information in different ways than non-experts (ibid.2010). Emotion, including
affect induced from social stimuli impacts neurotransmitter levels and other neurological
processes (Lieberman et al 2007; Lieberman and Eisenberger, 2010;).
This is but a small sample of evidence that shows how existing in the world as physical
beings is experienced biologically, physiologically, and kinesthetically. These experiences
fundamentally provide the structural foundation in our brains for thinking, feeling and acting.
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2.
Reasoning is fundamentally analogical
Humans are structure-seeking creatures (D’Andrade, 1995). All else equal, we seek
maximum utility and efficiency in organizing and making sense of sensory information (Rosch,
1974, in D’Andrade, 1995). Analogical processing, arguably, is the major contributor to the
cognitive and structure-seeking capacities of humans (Hummel and Holyoak, 1997; Gentner and
Calhoun, 2008, 2010).
Analogical thinking requires retrieving an analog source and then ‘mapping’ elements of
the source to a target (Hummel and Holyoak, 1997; Mandler, 1992). This process generates an
abstraction that eliminates most of the spatial information and detail processed during original
perception (Mandler, 1992). What is left is a set of correspondences where the underlying
structure of the analogy is what is highlighted. When common structure is highlighted in an
analogy, schema “induction” occurs (Hummel and Holyoak, 1997:427; Gick and Holyoak, 1983;
Gentner and Colhoun, 2008).
There is by now considerable experimental evidence for schema induction based on
studies of performance on parallel problems and memory (Gentner and Colhoun, 2008) and
how schemas maintain their structure across task and social domains (Halford et al, 1998).
33
D.White. Problems and Promise of Metaphor...KA 707
Schemas learned early and from a “wide variety of contexts” will be more generalizable and
tend to resemble a wider variety of new contexts (Quinn, 1997:179).
Consistent with structure-seeking, our minds create analogies because we want to solve
a problem (Hummel and Holyoak, 1997), and we naturally seek causal and logical connections
through analogs . Thus, a “base domain” of experience with many “rich linked systems” of
schematic relationships, such as those conferred by years professional experience and
accumulated expertise, will yield many potential analogical inferences by providing the
corresponding structure for the target problem (Bowdle & Gentner, in Gentner & Colhoun,
2008:4). The better established the relational structure resulting from experience and expertise
is, the stronger the schemas will tend to be (Gentner & Colhoun, 2008:6). This is an important
foundational concept in our notion of functional embodiment and has implications for theories
of organizational culture, as I shall show below. In this and many other ways, abstract thinking
consists of chains of progressively more abstract concepts built up from basic-level schemas.
This is what gives analogy and, by extension, cognitive models, their “inferential power”
(Gentner & Colhoun, 2008:7). It is also what enables schemas and models to underwrite
culture.
3.
Cognition is structured by primary image schemas
34
D.White. Problems and Promise of Metaphor...KA 707
Image schemas provide both the spatial-cognitive and structural foundation for more
abstract forms of reasoning because thinking is, at its core, analogical. Along these lines, Lakoff
and Johnson developed their theory of image schemas (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980; Lakoff 1987;
Johnson, 1987; Lakoff and Johnson 1999). Image schemas are tacit, “experiential gestalts” and a
feature of long term memory that come into being through sensorimotor action and provide a
rudimentary concept of spatial relationships by encoding features of those relationships into
cognitive structure (Lakoff, 1987; Johnson, 1987; Lakoff and Johnson, 1999; Kimmel, 2005,
2008). As such, UP-DOWN, BALANCE, CYCLE, PATH-GOAL, FORCE, CONTAINER, etc. as described
above, are all image schemas. But do they exist?
While contexts for experience are obviously not the same across cultures, crosslinguistic studies have shown most abstract metaphors seem to have universal and embodied
“source domains” like CONTAINER (Haser, 2003). And as described above, extensive crosscultural linguistic evidence exists for how children learn modal grammar, evidence that strongly
suggests such learning would not be possible without underlying schematic structure.
Neurocomputational models have shown how cognitive tasks such as learning spatial
relationships and word meanings can only occur through patterns of neural activation based on
schematic structure. For example, secondary neural structures bind to primary visual or motor
structures in the primary cortex, which suggests meanings, such understanding a spatial
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location on a map, ,must first be perceived as abstractions without specific details (see Reiger,
also Bailey, in Lakoff and Johnson, 1999).
4. Schemas and cultural models are the foundations of culture
In cognitive anthropology, “culture” is defined as a collection of shared models by which
groups derive meaning and make sense of experience. So-called “cultural models” are based on
shared18 foundational schemas (D’Andrade, 1987; Shore, 1996; Quinn and Strauss 1997;
Hutchins,1995, 2010) - tacitly known, imagistic gestalts - that underwrite culture. As Shore
(2002) states:
“… Culture might profitably be understood in relation to issues of how people understand what they
understand... The most useful unit of culture, I concluded, was the schema ...an organized framework for
making sense of the world that exists in two basic forms: mental models in the mind, and instituted
models in the world. A cultural community shared in a vast stock of conventional models of and for
experience, and these models came in many forms. They were also distributed socially and personally in
complex ways...Culture in this view was a kind of distributed network of models, some more basic than
others.”(2002:5)
For example, Shore found a center-periphery schema underpins many related cultural
models in Samoan life, work that has been also recently substantiated by Bennardo (2011):
“...institutions as varied as brother-sister relations, dance styles, speech styles, and the relations between
different kinds of chiefs share a general abstract schema. Despite the obvious difference between chiefs
and orators, or different styles of dance, or village orientation, these phenomena all form a class of linked
experiences for Samoans because they share the same foundational schema...the Samoan centerperiphery schema appears to be grounded in the experience of a centered body with outward projection
(limbs), the kind of somaticized container schemas that commonly structures metaphorical projections
from body position to other kinds of social orientation.” (Shore,1996: 274)
18
By “shared” what is meant is that which is shared across a community. A community is a boundary defined as a group or
groups unified by common purpose and tasks, such as a tribe, a professional community, an organization, or even a nation. I
acknowledge the recursiveness in this definition. For a community can be (and I believe should be) defined by the very shared
models I am describing. What constitute communities are shared models.
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Shore (1996) thus proposed that culture is made up of cultural cognitive “models” built up from
more basic or foundational schemas that “underwrite meaning” across many contexts
(1996:53):
“Obviously the difference between a model and a foundational schema is relative rather than
intrinsic or absolute. The distinction…becomes useful when a set of specific cultural models
shares a common general schema. The distinction is really a matter of context. Take, for
example, the general hub-and-spoke spatial plan we see in airports, school buildings, and
shopping malls. As a general spatial organization, the hub-and-spoke layout could be considered
a foundation schema in relation to any of its specific architectural genres, which I would call
models. On the other hand, the hub-and-spoke building plan might be treated as a model based
on an even more general radial schema that informs a variety of related arrangements, such as
route scheduling for airlines or trains, or the relationship between home offices and regional
managers…As such, they underwrite the possibility of meaning construction in a variety of
contexts.” (1996:53)
Not all cultural models contain foundational schemas (Shore, 1996). But what
differentiates those that do is a family resemblance to other models, which usually suggests an
underlying schema. Models linked by foundational schemas exhibit “special status” in a cultural
community, “contributing to the sense that its members live in a world populated by culturally
typical practices and a common worldview” (Shore, 1996:53-54). Foundational schemas explain
what is and what happens within a cultural community precisely because they underwrite many
diverse cultural models.
Models and schemas underwrite culture through embodied, socially distributed and
dynamic cognitive processes (Hutchins 1995; D’Andrade 1987). Following Lakoff and Johnson
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(1980, 1987, and 1999) and Johnson (1987), Shore states that foundational schemas evolve out
of primary embodied experience. Cultural models originate when groups share “task solutions”
(Quinn and Strauss, 1997). Task solutions evolve as groups solving recurrent problems or
confront challenges formulate mediating cognitive structures (Hutchins, 1995). Such structures
become shared when they reside in memory and are reinforced by experience (Quinn and
Strauss, 1997), when they are learned in a variety of contexts (Quinn and Strauss, 1997), when
they are enacted by routines (Rerup and Feldman, 2011), when they carry affective power
reinforced by group experience, when they are historically meaningful and when adequately
explain and account for what happens (Quinn and Straus, 1997).
Thus, the work people do, the problems they confront, the tools and technologies and
artifacts they create or reuse in confronting those problems, the processes they create, the
axioms they invent – all of these – powerfully influence the creation and propagation of
foundational schema and therefore cultural models for professional and organizational
cultures.
6. Metaphor is a primary way to identify schemas
Foundational schemas are so pervasive their functioning is often taken for granted by
those within a cultural community (Shore, 1996). This makes them hard to study. But cultural
enactments like narrative contain at their core a series of structuring events that, in the words
of Knorr-Cetina, “come into view through the definitions of entities, through systems of
classification, through the ways in which epistemic strategy, empirical procedure and social
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D.White. Problems and Promise of Metaphor...KA 707
collaboration are understood” (1999:10). It is through these structures, and in particular
through metaphor, that schemas and cultural models can be ‘seen’ and understood. How?
Cognitive and cultural models are inherently metaphoric, which is to say in their
analogic character they mirror human reasoning (Nunez 2010; Shore, 1996). And to a great
extent, they are culture-specific (Quinn, 1991; Barcelona, 2003). They are discoverable by
studying how people use conceptual metaphor, metonymy, conceptual blends and framing 19
(D’Andrade, 2005; Quinn, 2005).
An extended example of this, in the form of a compelling investigative method, was
provided by Quinn in her study of American’s conceptions of marriage (2005). Quinn’s work
focused on how schemas were identified through conceptual metaphor. She asked subjects
relatively few, open-ended questions and then conducted rigorous and in-depth analysis of the
interviews. In this way she identified roughly 400 metaphors about marriage. She separated
conventional metaphors (those common or clichéd in American English) from unique or novel
metaphors. From the remaining set she adduced 8 overarching metaphor “classes”. These were
19
I use the term “conceptual metaphor” from Barcelona (2003) to refer to the linguistic processes of metaphor,
metonymy, conceptual blending, and framing. And although it is assumed the reader is familiar with these
definitions, given their centrality to my project I offer the following definitions, taken from Nunez (2010) and
Lakoff (1987):
 Metaphor (cognitive) - The cognitive process of understanding one thing in terms of, or through another
more foundational concept.
 Conventional metaphors – Metaphors in common usage in English, or in business jargon (“raise the bar”,
“connect the dots”). Non-conventional metaphors are those specific to a cultural or social domain.
 Metonymy - Where an image, concept or word/phrase is a stand-in for another (“Washington is upset
about the Israeli-Palestinian issue”, “Operations is quality”). A common metonymy heard in this study: we
need a CSP (Career Stage Profile) for that group in order to value them. The metonymy here is the CSP –
an HR artifact describing career path standards – which functions as a stand in for a constellation of
actions and artifacts that might make a particular group feel valued in the organization.
 Conceptual blends - Where two metaphorical concepts are used to form a 3rd distinct concept (“Cloud
computing”, “bridge loan”, “virtualization is a stepping stone”)
 Mental frames – Ways of conceptualizing an issue consisting of metaphoric/metonymic expressions or
blends
39
D.White. Problems and Promise of Metaphor...KA 707
metaphors for “lastingness, sharedness, (mutual) benefit, compatibility, difficulty, effort,
success (or failure), and risk”. (2005:48). By analyzing how speakers reasoned about marriage
she was able to discern an underlying logic, or “cultural schema” that organized the 8 classes:
“...people regarded their marriages as successful if they lasted. In order to last, though, a marriage had to
be beneficial, and in order for it to be beneficial, its difficulties had to be overcome, requiring effort.”
(2005: pg. 61)
As she states, “I formulated the idea of such a cultural schema for marriage through my prior
analysis of metaphor” (2005: 61).
Quinn might have also considered analyzing metonymies 20. According to Barcelona and
his colleagues, metonymies may be even more basic to language and cognition than metaphor
because metonymy often “motivates” metaphor (Barcelona, 2003: 18). Because they are
experientially more basic (Radden, 2003), they may be prior to and give rise to conceptual
metaphors. For example, according to Radden (2003), several kinds of metonymies characterize
metaphor use such as correlation (e.g. ACTIVE IS ALIVE/INACTIVE IS DEAD), implication (e.g.
KNOWING IS SEEING) and stands-for or part-whole relationships (e.g. ACTION IS MOTION.
Another common metonymy is the effect-for-cause kind where a behavior, like drooping
shoulders, stands for an emotion like sadness. In my research in occupational and
organizational metaphor use, I have found metonymies to be more common than other kinds
of metaphors.
7. Task, routines and professionalization practice provide grounding for
cultural models and schemas
20
Mentioned here because metonymies are central to my own thesis research.
40
D.White. Problems and Promise of Metaphor...KA 707
Though much has been written about professional and occupational culture and
enculturation and socialization (e.g. Bucher and Stelling, 1977; Barley, 1983; Van Maanen &
Barley 1984, Abbott, 1998; Daley, 2001; Bunderson, 2001;), there has not, to my knowledge,
research done on the relationships between professional cognition and culture. The
functionally embodied theory of culture provides strong theoretical foundation to make this
link. Foundational schemas and cultural models underwrite professional culture and
circumscribe what it means to become a professional in that culture, through all the
mechanisms described above. ‘Professionalization’ – the social and developmental acts
involved in becoming ‘professional’, and the tools, technologies, practices and social contexts
that sustain professional communities, are engines for shaping foundational schemas and
models. And under the right conditions these schemas and cultural models become dominant
in an organization’s host culture, accounting in large part for what we think of as
“organizational culture”. How might this be possible?
Strauss and Quinn’s (1997) model of shared task solutions provides a compelling
framework. Cultural models originate when groups share “task solutions” (Strauss and Quinn
1997). Task solutions evolve as groups solving recurrent problems or confront challenges
formulate mediating cognitive structures (Hutchins, 1995):
41
D.White. Problems and Promise of Metaphor...KA 707
“Among the common experiences with which human sociocultural life presents members of any
community are, inevitably, recurrent tasks, problems, challenges, contradictions, and conflicts.
As solutions to these are invented, the most useful practical and appealing of these solutions
tend to spread. Even complex tasks are met by creating and widely sharing the correspondingly
complex solutions, such as human language…(and these) are ubiquitous in everyday life.”
(Strauss and Quinn, 1997:125)
Thus schemas and cultural models in this way underwrite culture via the processes and
resources of analogical transfer across people and groups, a process enabled by experience, by
learning in a variety of contexts, by routines, by motivating social affect (Strauss, 1992), by
historically relevant themes, and by the result of their ability to account for what happens
(D’Andrade, 1995; Strauss and Quinn, 1997; Quinn, 2005; Rerup & Feldman, 2011). The work
professionals in organizations do, the problems they confront, the tools and technologies and
artifacts they create or reuse in confronting those problems, the processes they create, the
routines they enact, the axioms they invent – all of these – powerfully influence the creation
and propagation of foundational schemas and cultural models for professional cultures. Task
and technology environments common to professional communities in this way provide the
ground and context to influence the way people who feel they are part of those communities
make sense of their environments (Leonardi and Jackson, 2009; Leonardi, 2011). In an
organizational setting, I hypothesize the same phenomena manifest in foundational models for
how decisions are made, for policies, processes, procedures, routines, communication patterns,
symbols, artifacts, values, norms, and so forth. A small but growing body of organizational work
already exists along these lines, positing so-called “basic assumptions” (Schein, 1992) or
“paradigms” (Johnson, 1990) that underpin organizational sensemaking, from “strategies for
action” (Swidler, 2005) to marketing to making sense of industry competitors (Johnson, 1990).
42
D.White. Problems and Promise of Metaphor...KA 707
Thus, thinking of organizational culture and change in this way, as abundantly more than
language, symbols and espoused values, has significant implications for practice.
8. Competing schemas: A professional culture’s schemas become dominant in an
organizational culture under the right conditions
Research on occupational culture was mostly in vogue 20 years ago (for example, see
Gregory, 1983; Smircich, 1983; Barley, 1983; Van Maanen and Barley, 1984; Schein, 1992;
Fonne and Myrhe, 1996; Merritt, 2000; Helmreich and Merritt, 2001; Hyland et al, 2001;
Paoline, 2003). But most of these studies confined professional culture to sub cultures without
accounting for the relationship between subcultures and host organizational culture. The
culture-as-models concept recasts occupational culture as an important purveyor of schemas
and models, with metaphors as the central actor providing the clearest evidence of how salient
a particular occupational culture’s influence might be within an organization.
In my view, professions “enculturate” organizations by imparting to the broader
organization the foundational schemas that instantiate the cultural models predominant in the
organization. Over time and under the right conditions these foundational schemas and cultural
models become dominant such that they constitute the organizational “culture”. What are
these conditions?
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D.White. Problems and Promise of Metaphor...KA 707
Occupational communities inside and across organizations do similar work, have similar
professional orientation and training, and focus on similar problems (Van Maanen and Barley,
1984; Hughes, 1989; Constant, 1989). When the problems these communities address are
critical or core to a particular organization’s success or basic functioning, the foundational
schemas and models these groups hold are likely to become shared in the wider organization
through the processes and dynamics described above. Crucially, these groups provide the
organization with a compelling cognitive “template” for the host culture. If the foundational
schema and cultural models borne by that professional community are robust enough in terms
of sensemaking utility, and – as they tend to be – following Strauss and Quinn (1997), possess
sufficient durability and motivating force, my hypothesis is they will become shared across the
organization. In this way the dominant professional community’s system of meaning, through
multiple channels and modes provide the themes, cognitive models, and schemas that shape
the wider organizational culture 21.
Examples abound, and may explain why “engineering cultures” or “sales cultures” or
“mission driven cultures” (etc.) become dominant metaphors people use to describe
organizational cultures. It is not that these cultures are monolithic. I propose these metaphors
describe foundational schemas that underwrite meaning-making and behavior in these
21
This is, in fact, the focus of my thesis.
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D.White. Problems and Promise of Metaphor...KA 707
organizations. They characterize what it feels like living, working in and making sense of the
world inside these organizations. As such these metaphors provide insight into these shared
realities.
And so we return to Morgan. As problematic as I believe his thesis to be, the notion that
organizations could be conceptualized through one kind of root metaphor is entirely consistent
with the notion of foundational schema. What Morgan does not account for is how these
“root” metaphors come to feel so salient to an organization. The functionally embodied theory
of culture explains how. What is at the root of the root metaphor? Simply – and profoundly - a
foundational schema.
Conclusion: Implications
In sketching the outline of a functionally embodied theory of culture, I recast metaphor
as a central actor in this theory. The analysis and explication of metaphor becomes one of the
primary ways to discern underlying cognitive structure. The schema and model approach may,
in fact, enable a fundamental reconceptualization of organizational culture and change because
of the pervasiveness of these structures underpinning many enactments of organizational life.
This echoes the anthropologist Michael Herzfeld’s distinction between “language-based” and
“language derived” models of meaning:
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“The former reduce all semiotic forms to language: everything becomes a text...In languagederived models, by contrast, the relatively immediate access one can gain to linguistic
meanings...permits the heuristic deployment of models...The goal is to explore both
commonalities and differences among a range of codes – architecture, music, cuisine, sports,
and, indeed, language”. (Herzfeld, 2001:53)
The ubiquity of metaphor-derived cultural models and schemas makes them excellent
candidates as a locus of research and intervention in organizations, precisely because they are
experientially basic and ubiquitous and, as such, govern a wider range of behavior. Indeed,
more and more theory and research points just this way, as Kimmel suggests when he says “a
full theory of situated embodiment will also have to enlarge the scope of image schemas with
regard to their diverse functional roles” (2008:78).
There are many application possibilities of this approach, and all of them use metaphor
as a central agent. By identifying and describing the manifestations of schemas through shared
metaphor, leaders and practitioners have a robust and pragmatic framework for
conceptualizing and operationalizing change. Because foundational schemas and cultural
models “show up” in as many ways as they do – in what people do, in what people say, in the
assumptions organizations make, in how organizations organize and represent themselves to
the world (e.g. through branding), in what they privilege as knowledge, and in how they
conceptualize problems and define success, in how and where they confer power - in short, in
all the myriad of ways culture manifests, leaders and practitioners can identify and intervene in
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new and truly systemic ways. Analysis of metaphor, using Quinn’s model as foundation, can
become thus the essential starting point for these investigations. Simply exposing foundational
schemas in ways that are experientially “true” for a group may shift emotion and mental
constructs and shift the current state (Schein, 1992).
Positing culture as schemas and models is not without its own set of epistemological
and hermeneutic challenges, as discussed. But one way to mitigate these challenges is to use
metaphor analysis as the starting point for investigation, rather than the end point, as the
metaphor functionalists or symbolists would have us do. By eliciting underlying schema and
models through metaphor, cognitive patterns might be exposed that can then be validated
through other means. Dual coding of elicited constructs will help mitigate the imposition of etic
interpretation (Sieck, Rasmussen and Smart, 2010). Elicited patterns might then be mapped
through cognitive mapping techniques (for example, see Steiger and Steiger, 2008) and shared
with members of the target culture for further validation, or as an intervention. Consensus
analysis could then be used as an empirical technique to assess how widely the elicited
constructs are held by informants (Romney, Batchelder, and Weller, 1987; Stone-Jovicich, et al,
2011; Borgatti and Halgin, 2011). And all of these techniques might be cast into an extended
case study approach (Burawoy, 1999) that also employs other ethnographic data in a reflexive
manner. The goal of all of this is to provide multiple strands of evidence showing the many
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D.White. Problems and Promise of Metaphor...KA 707
ways in which people enact cultural models and schemas - and also how the investigator might
come to know and interpret these models and schemas in the way that she does - and in so
doing provide more substantive and pragmatic grounding for notions of culture and change.
Enacted through such a reflexive case methodology, cultural knowledge can be sought
and located in the “dialectical space in which neither positivism nor deconstruction
predominates” (Herzfeld, 2001:53). Instead, through a kind of reflexive pragmatics, initiated by
locating the underpinnings of culture through metaphor, we can come to see culture as always
emergent, enacted, embodied, and performative, at once local and yet pervasive, and entirely
grounded enterprise. When we do, we begin to bring organizational culture and change theory
closer to organizational culture and change practice. This, I suspect, is a move our clients and
managerial stakeholders, as the ultimate objects and erstwhile beneficiaries of our academic
investigations, might welcome.
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